Learning from Video Games in Higher Education
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Computers in Human Behavior 80 (2018) 283e294 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh Full length article Student attitudes to games-based skills development: Learning from video games in higher education Matthew Barr School of Humanities, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, Scotland, UK article info abstract Article history: Qualitative interview data is presented in support of previously-published quantitative evidence that Received 27 June 2017 suggests commercial video games may be used to develop useful skills and competencies in under- Received in revised form graduate students. The purpose of the work described here was to document the attitudes of those 18 November 2017 students involved in the quantitative study and to explore how the game-based intervention was Accepted 20 November 2017 perceived. To this end, student attitudes to the use of specified games to develop communication skill, Available online 21 November 2017 resourcefulness and adaptability are examined. A broadly positive perception of the games' efficacy for skills development is revealed, and the aspects of game play that students believe contribute to skills Keywords: Video games development are discussed. These aspects include the need to communicate with team mates in order to fl Game-based learning succeed, and the uid, unpredictable nature of in-game challenges. It is suggested that while the games Higher education played an important role in skills development, interaction between students, facilitated by game play, Graduate attributes was also a significant factor. Skills development © 2017 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction Please (Lucas Pope, 2013), Borderlands 2 (Gearbox Software, 2012), Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (Crystal Dynamics, 2010), and In Barr (2017), quantitative evidence is presented to suggest that Warcraft III (Blizzard Entertainment, 2002). The games were commercial video games may be used to develop in students a selected by presenting a panel of games scholars and games in- number of useful skills and competencies: communication, dustry personnel with a list of the specified attributes and asking resourcefulness and adaptability. Such skills are referred to as these experts to suggest games that might exercise such attributes. ‘graduate attributes’ (Barrie, 2006; Hughes & Barrie, 2010) and are The suggested titles were then filtered based on logistical concerns, generally associated with the employability of higher education including hardware constraints (the specification of the computers graduates. The rationale behind the work described by Barr was used in the study) and network restrictions (availability of the ports that commercial video games are designed to exercise such skills. In required for online play). For example, both Minecraft and World of that study, a randomised controlled experiment was used to mea- Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) were suggested as candi- sure the effects of playing selected games on the attainment of the dates for developing communication skills. However, while Mine- specified graduate attributes. Undergraduate students were craft was included in the study, the MMORPG (Massively randomly assigned to either an intervention or a control group and Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) World of Warcraft was not, previously validated, self-report instruments to measure adapt- due to the technical challenges involved (an internet connection is ability, resourcefulness and communication skill were adminis- essential to play, and the university infrastructure did not permit tered to both groups. The intervention group played specified, high such a connection) and the steep learning curve associated with the quality video games under controlled conditions over an eight- game. With just 2 h of play per game, novice players would barely week period. scratch the surface of World of Warcraft, and not experience the The selected titles comprised: Portal 2 (Valve Corporation, 2011), collaborative team-based questing that might exercise their Team Fortress 2 (Valve Corporation, 2007), Gone Home (The communication skills. Fullbright Company, 2013), Minecraft (Mojang, 2009), Papers, A large effect size was observed with mean score change 1.1,1.15, and 0.9 standard deviations more positive in the intervention group than the control on the communication, adaptability, and resourcefulness scales respectively (p ¼ 0.004, p ¼ 0.002, and E-mail address: [email protected]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.11.030 0747-5632/© 2017 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 284 M. Barr / Computers in Human Behavior 80 (2018) 283e294 p ¼ 0.013 for differences in groups by unpaired t-test). The large design that playing Portal 2 e one of the games used in the study effect size and statistical significance of these results supported the described here e could improve players' problem solving, spatial hypothesis that playing video games can improve graduate skills, skill, and persistence. This is an influential and well-designed and suggested that such game-based learning interventions have a quantitative study but it is not possible to determine from the role to play in higher education. published work why the participants felt their problem solving and However significant, these quantitative results do not explore other skills were improved. Similarly, Adachi and Willoughby the vitally important human implications of the work e put simply, (2013), demonstrated by means of a four-year longitudinal study research-led educational interventions can only be effective if they that playing strategy and role-playing games predicted self- are received positively by the students involved. Students may reported problem-solving skills among a sample of 1492 high resist learning activities that do not align with their preconceived school-aged participants. Again, however, some account of the notions of education, which are often rooted in the didactic, students' attitudes is lacking, and we do not know what aspects of instructor-led forms of teaching to which they are exposed at the games participants felt had exercised the requisite skills. school and college (Seidel & Tanner, 2013). Johnson et al. (2009), for That is not to say that attitudes cannot be measured by quan- example, describe student resistance to moving from traditional titative means. Hamari et al. (2016) used survey instruments to (teacher-centered) to non-traditional (learner-centered) ap- measure participants' subjective experience of playing educational proaches to learning. Henderson and Dancy (2007) list student games, asking questions such as “How interesting was the game?” resistance to active, research-led learning as one of several barriers and “Did you feel bored with the game?”. Ruggiero (2015) used a to educational reform, also noting that students “do not like to survey instrument to measure students' affective learning and interact with each other and are often not prepared to think attitude after they had played a game designed to affect players' independently”. Perhaps most pertinent here, given the experi- attitude towards homelessness. Shin and Ahn (2013) also used a mental, game-based nature of this intervention, is the recom- survey instrument, in this case to explore the negative association mendation of Felder and Brent (1996): between game use and cognitive empathy. However, these studies were designed to measure specific aspects of participants' atti- …to minimize resistance to any student-centered method, try to tudes. For more exploratory studies, qualitative methods such as persuade the students from the outset that you are neither interviews can yield rich data that are less influenced by the pre- playing a game nor performing an experiment, but teaching in a conceptions of the researcher, whilst remaining grounded within a way known to help students learn more and understand better. particular framework (such as the stated graduate attributes described here). Bourgonjon et al. (2016), for example, used qual- Looking specifically at game-based learning inventions, there is itative means to explore player perspectives on the positive impact evidence that these may not be accepted by all students. Egenfeldt- of video games, analysing a body of data drawn from online dis- Nielsen (2007, pp. 146e150), for example, documents a high degree cussion forums in terms of a pre-existing framework of potential of student resistance to the very idea of learning from a game, again impacts. Ortiz de Gortari, Aronsson, and Griffiths (2011) used related to their expectations e in this case, expectations of the qualitative interviews to investigate what the authors term ‘game manner in which the ‘serious’ academic subject of history should be transfer phenomena’, wherein players appear to integrate elements taught. Students have also been revealed to be resistant to the idea of their game-playing experience into real life. Exploring somewhat of developing their graduate attributes by means of additional, similar territory to that described here, this example serves to stand-alone activities. The expectation is that such skills develop- highlight the usefulness of qualitative interviews in understanding ment should be embedded in